The new Nine Inch Nails record Not The Actu­al Events is avail­able NOW, along with any oth­er high-res­o­lu­tion down­loads that went live in the store last week.

A day before the announced release date, Nine Inch Nails released their sec­ond stu­dio EPNot The Actu­al Events to those who ordered it online. Because I thought I had to wait anoth­er day, it was a very nice sur­prise. The EP finds Trent Reznor and now offi­cial band mem­ber Atti­cus Ross tak­ing an unex­pect­ed left turn from the 2013’s Hes­i­ta­tion Marks and sounds unrec­og­niz­able from their cur­rent film work. “It’s an unfriend­ly, fair­ly impen­e­tra­ble record that we need­ed to make” says Reznor. “It’s an EP because that end­ed up being the prop­er length to tell that sto­ry.”

Not the Actu­al Events is unlike any­thing I’ve ever heard from Nine Inch Nails, it’s almost like an alter­nate real­i­ty. The album cov­er reminds me of Still from the dou­ble album And All That Could Have Been, but appears to be an absolute oppo­site in terms of music. Using scream­ing synth’s, punch­ing drums larg­er than life and, at the first cou­ple of lis­tens, most­ly unin­tel­li­gi­ble lyrics, Nine Inch Nails gets in touch with a unprece­dent­ed ener­gy.

At first, I didn’t quite under­stand what I was lis­ten­ing to. It sound­ed some­what dis­ap­point­ing, expect­ing it to sound like their pre­vi­ous albums. These feel­ings were quick­ly tak­en away from the moment I lis­tened to it a sec­ond time, and it gets even bet­ter with every time I lis­ten to it. You will not be able to under­stand and appre­ci­ate the full extent of this EP with­in the first few moments of lis­ten­ing, it is absolute­ly not some­thing you want to lis­ten to while doing some­thing else, you have to sit down, close your eyes and just lis­ten.

Not The Actu­al Events is an impen­e­tra­ble EP which requires effort to learn to appre­ci­ate it and is by no means oblig­at­ed to make sense to you.

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2 Responses

Agree 100% I got the noti­fi­ca­tion ear­ly this morn­ing at 3:45 am and by try­ing to pre­view it quick­ly while in bed and i thought it was very odd and not of great qual­i­ty… when I left for work I put it on again as I trav­eled in, by the time I got to work I had lis­tened to it front to back 2 and a half full times… and Now I think bits awe­some and real­ly chal­lenges the lis­ten­er to LIS­TEN not pas­sive­ly hear. It’s like a Fight to under­stand what your lis­ten­ing to the first cou­ple times but then becomes more like a chore­o­graphed wrestling match planned in advance to shock and anger you on pur­pose but to then Final­ly real­ize it’s Genius.… I love it

What I hear in this album is a tes­ti­mo­ny of after going through the sta­tions of com­ing to Christ in Year Zero. What he sees with his new eyes, us asleep, him know­ing sava­tion want­i­ng us to know what he has come to know.